Emily Dickinson Quotes

We do not always remember the things that do no credit to us. We justify them, cover them in bright lies or with the thick dust of forgetfulness. All of the things that Shadow had done in his life of which he was not proud, all the things he wished he had done otherwise or left undone, came at him then in a swirling storm of guilt and regret and shame, and he had nowhere to hide from them. He was as naked and as open as a corpse on a table, and dark Anubis the jackal god was his prosector and his prosecutor and his persecutor.

There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse.

This is his first punishment, that by the verdict of his own heart no guilty man is acquitted.

Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt.

There is no witness so terrible and no accuser so powerful as conscience which dwells within us.

Conscience, the executioner, shaking her secret scourge.

My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain. Perjury, perjury, in the high'st degree; Murder, stern murder in the dir'st degree, Throng to the bar, crying all, 'Guilty!, guilty!

Good people end up in Hell because they can't forgive themselves.

Conscience is its own readiest accuser.

No torment in the world is comparable to an accusing conscience.

They whose guilt within their bosom lies, imagine every eye beholds their blame.

God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good.

I believe in guilt. There's not enough guilt around these days for my taste.

See! those fiendish lineaments graven on the darkness, the writhed lip of scorn, the mockery of that living eye, the pointed finger, touching the sore place in your heart! Do you remember any act of enormous folly, at which you would blush, even in the remotest cavern of the earth? Then recognize your Shame.

Our faults afflict us more than our good deeds console. Pain is ever uppermost in the conscience as in the heart.

Being conscious of having done a wicked action leaves stings of remorse behind it, which, like an ulcer in the flesh, makes the mind smart with perpetual wounds; for reason, which chases away all other pains, creates repentance, shames the soul with confusion, and punishes it with torment.

O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven

The vices we scoff at in others laugh at us within ourselves.

She haunted him, as an ungenerous action haunts one.

Easy to see that naught save sorrow could bring a man to such a view of things. And yet a sorrow for which there can be no help is no sorrow. It is some dark sister traveling in sorrow's clothing. Men do not turn from God so easily you see. Not so easily. Deep in each man is the knowledge that something knows of his existence. Something knows, and cannot be fled nor hid from. To imagine otherwise is to imagine the unspeakable. It was never that this man ceased to believe in God. No. It was rather that he came to believe terrible things of Him.

Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed.

Now conscience wakes despair That slumber'd,-wakes the bitter memory Of what he was, what is, and what must be Worse.

If truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom.

O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!